The Proposal: Number 1 in series (Survivors’ Club)
The Proposal: Chapter 23

Hugo,” she whispered.

He had been sleeping for a while, but he had been making stirring sounds in the last few minutes. She watched the faint light from the lamp flicker across his face.

“Mmm,” he said.

“Hugo,” she said, “I have remembered something.”

“Mmm,” he said again and then inhaled loudly. “Me too. I have just this moment remembered, and if you will give me a few moments, I will be ready to create more memories.”

“About … about the day Vernon died,” she said, and his eyes snapped open.

They stared at each other.

“I have always tried hard not to remember those few minutes,” she said. “But of course I have remembered. Nothing can ever erase the images.”

He spread his hand over the side of her face and kissed her.

“I know,” he said. “I know.”

“And something has always fluttered at me,” she said. “Something that did not somehow fit. I have never tried too hard to discover what it was because I did not want to remember at all. I still do not. I still wish I could forget altogether.”

“You have remembered what did not fit?” he said.

“It happened last evening,” she said, “when your neighbors were all trying to persuade you to waltz and everyone was laughing and you held up your hands so that you could give an answer.”

His thumb stroked her cheek.

“You held up your hands with your palms out,” she said. “It is what people do, is it not, when they want to say something or stop something.”

He did not say anything.

“When I—” she began and swallowed convulsively. “When I turned as Vernon fell from the gallery, Jason was turned to him already, and he was holding his hands up above his head to stop him. It was a futile gesture, of course, but an understandable one under the circumstances. Except that—”

She frowned, even now trying to bring the remembered image into focus. But she was right.

“His palms were turned inward?” he said. “Beckoning rather than stopping? Taunting? ”

“Perhaps I have misremembered,” she said. Though she knew she had not.

“No,” he said. “Memories like that are indelible even if the mind will not admit them for seven years or more.”

“He would not have been able to do that,” she said, “if I had not turned my back, if I had gone up to Vernon instead of to the library.”

“Gwendoline,” he said, “if nothing had happened, how long would you have remained in the library?”

She thought about it.

“Not long,” she said. “No longer than five minutes. Probably less. He needed me. He had just overheard something very upsetting. I would have understood that as soon as I stepped into the room. I would have drawn a few deep breaths, as I had done on other occasions, and gone to him.”

“He took the loss of your child badly?” he asked.

“He blamed himself,” she said.

“And he needed comforting,” he said. “Did he give you comfort?”

“He was ill,” she said.

“Yes,” he agreed, “he was. And if you had both lived for another fifty years, he would have continued ill and you would have continued to love him and to comfort him.”

“I promised for better or worse, in sickness or in health,” she said. “But I let him down in the end.”

“No,” he said. “You were not his jailer, Gwendoline. You could not be standing watch over him for twenty-four hours out of every day. And sick or not, he was not without his wits, was he? You had lost a child as much as he had. More. But he took the burden of guilt upon himself and in the process robbed you of the comfort you so desperately needed. Even in the depths of his despair, he ought to have known that he was placing an unbearable burden upon you and doing nothing to fulfill what he had promised you. Illness, unless it is total madness, is not an excuse for great selfishness. You needed love as much as he did. He fell. No one pushed him. He was beckoned and taunted. But he was the one who fell—deliberately, it would seem. I understand why you blame yourself. I better than anyone, perhaps, can understand that. But I absolutely absolve you of all blame. Let it go, my love. Grayson cannot really be accused of murder, can he, even though his intent was doubtless murderous. Leave him to his conscience, though I doubt he has one. Leave him to his nastiness. And let yourself be loved. Let me love you.”

“He was with us when I fell,” she said, “when my horse did not clear the hedge. He had never missed a jump before and it was not the highest fence he had jumped. Jason was with us. He was behind me, crowding me, trying to encourage my horse to clear the jump, I have always thought. He could not have … Could he?”

She heard him inhale slowly.

“Is it possible,” she said, “that I did not kill my own child? Or is it wishful thinking because I have realized that he wanted Vernon out of the way? Even dead? Did he want our child dead too? Did he want me dead?”

“Ah, Gwendoline,” he said. “Ah, my love.”

She closed her eyes, but she could not stop the hot, scalding tears from spilling over onto her cheeks and diagonally across them to drip onto the blanket and pool at the side of her nose.

He gathered her into his arms, spread one great hand behind her head, and kissed her wet cheeks, her eyelids, her temples, her wet lips.

“Hush,” he crooned. “Hush now. Let it all go. Let me love you. You have love all wrong, Gwendoline. It is not all give, give, give. It is taking as well. It is allowing the other one the pleasure and joy of giving. Let me love you.”

She thought her heart would surely break. All her life, it seemed, or since her marriage, anyway, she had held herself together, tried always to be cheerful, tried not to be negative or bitter. She had tried to love, and she had accepted love in return provided it was the quiet, steady love of her mother or her brother or Lauren or Lily or the rest of her family.

But …

“It would be like jumping off the edge of the world,” she said.

“Yes,” he said. “I’ll be there to catch you.”

“Will you?” she said.

“And you can catch me when I jump,” he told her.

“You will squash me,” she said.

And they were both laughing, hugged together in each other’s arms, both damp from her tears.

“Gwendoline,” he said when they were finally quiet again, “will you marry me?”

She held him, her eyes closed, and inhaled the mingled smells of cologne and sweat and maleness. And the indefinable something wonderful that was Hugo himself.

“Do you think I can have children?” she said. “Do you think I deserve another chance? What if I cannot?”

He clucked his tongue.

“No one ever knows for sure,” he said. “We will replace out as time goes on. And yes, you deserve to have children of your own body. As for me, don’t worry. I would a thousand times rather marry you and have no children than marry any other woman in the world and have a dozen. In fact, I don’t think I will marry anyone else if you will not have me. I’ll have to start going to brothels.”

They were snorting with laughter again then.

“Well, in that case,” she said.

“Yes?” He drew back his head and gazed at her in the lamplight.

“I’ll marry you,” she said, sobering. “Oh, Hugo, I don’t care how many different worlds we have to cross in order to replace our own little world within. I don’t care. I will do what has to be done.”

“Me too,” he said.

And they smiled at each other until they both had tears in their eyes.

He sat up and rummaged around in the heap of his clothing until he found his watch. He held it up to the light of the lamp.

“Half past two,” he said. “We had better be out of here by half past five. Three hours. What can we do in three hours? Any suggestions?”

He turned to look down at her.

She opened her arms to him.

“Ah, yes,” he said. “An excellent suggestion. And three hours gives plenty of time for play as well as feasting.”

“Hugo,” she said as his arms closed about her again and he lay down on his back, bringing her over on top of him. “Oh, Hugo, I love you, I love you.”

“Mmm,” he said against her lips.

Hugo made the announcement at a late breakfast, which everyone attended. He ought perhaps to have spoken with Gwendoline’s brother first, but he had already done that once upon a time. And perhaps the announcement ought to have been made to her family first, but … why? Her family would be informed as soon as they returned to London.

“Ah,” Constance said, looking about the table and sounding wistful, “all the excitement is over, and tomorrow we will be returning to London.”

“But every moment of our stay has been wonderful, Constance,” Fiona said, her voice warm and animated in a way Hugo had never heard before this week. “And there is still today to enjoy.”

“And the excitement is not all over,” Hugo said from the head of the table. “At least, for me it is not. And for Gwendoline it is not. For we are newly betrothed and intend to spend the day enjoying our new status.”

She had told him last night that he might make the announcement today if he wished. She smiled now and bit her lip as the room filled with the sounds of exclamations and squeals and applause and everyone clambering to speak at once and chairs scraping back across the floor. Hugo found his hand being pumped, his back being slapped, his cheeks being kissed. Gwendoline, he saw, was being hugged and kissed too.

He wondered if her family members would react with such unbridled enthusiasm, and it occurred to him that quite possibly they would.

“You owe me ten guineas, I believe, Mark,” Cousin Claude called across the table. “I did say by the end of the week. And there were witnesses.”

“You could not have waited another day or two, Hugo?” Mark asked.

“And when are the nuptials to be?” Aunt Henrietta asked. “And where?”

“In London,” Hugo said. “Probably at St. George’s on Hanover Square. As soon as the banns have been read. We want to be married and back here for the summer.”

They had discussed other possibilities—Newbury Abbey, Crosslands Park, even Penderris Hall—but they wanted both families to attend, and any place outside London seemed impractical, partly because of the number of people who must be accommodated, and partly because his own family members had already just taken a holiday of several days. Besides, the Season would still be in full swing and Parliament still in session. They really did not want to wait until summer.

“St. George’s,” Aunt Rose said. “Grand! I hope we are all invited.”

“We could not possibly hold our nuptials,” Gwendoline said rashly, “if you are not all there, as well as all my family.”

“But I have nothing to wear,” Constance said and laughed merrily. “Oh, I am so happy I could burst.”

“Not all over the food, please, Con,” Cousin Claude said.

Hugo was tired. He had slept for perhaps an hour after the second, vigorous lovemaking, but he had used up all his renewed energy on a third bout, which had finished perilously close to half past five, the time by which he had decided they must leave the stables. It would have been a ghastly embarrassment to be discovered there by a groom.

Gwendoline had gone to bed when they returned to the house. He had not. He had been too excited—like a schoolboy.

He was tired now, but pleasantly so. His body was sated and relaxed, his mind centered upon happiness. And he would not allow entry to any mental warnings about happiness being a precariously temporary state or about romance being even flimsier. He was not just in love with his betrothed. He loved her. And he had no illusions about happily-ever-after. He knew that happiness was something that had to be worked for as hard and as diligently as he had worked as a boy at following in his father’s footsteps and later at being the best military officer in the British armies.

He was not afraid of failure.

Fiona strolled outdoors with him for a while after breakfast, linking her arm through his. It was a cool, cloudy late morning.

“This is all so beautiful, Hugo,” she said. “All the time we have been here, people have been telling you what they think you ought to do to develop the park, and you have said yourself that you will be making some changes. Don’t make too many. Sometimes nature just is.”

He looked down at her and was surprised at how much affection he felt for her, this woman whom his father had loved and with whom he had sired a daughter—Constance.

“I am not going to change it a great deal,” he said. “I am not going to make a grand, gaudy showpiece of it. Constance and I went to a garden party in Richmond a short while ago, you may recall. The garden was quite breathtaking in its magnificence. But I would not exchange my park here for it for any consideration in the world.”

“Good.” She walked silently beside him for a while. “Hugo, I know what I did. I know I drove you away to a life for which you were in no way suited despite the fact that you distinguished yourself so brilliantly. If you had died, I—”

He set a hand over hers on his arm.

“Fiona,” he said, “no one drove me to anything. I chose to go. And if I had not done so, you know, I would be a different man today. Perhaps better, perhaps worse, perhaps much the same. However it is, I would not wish to be different. I would not wish to be without the experiences that have brought me to where I am at this moment. If I had not gone, I would never have met Gwendoline. And I did not die, did I?”

“You are generous,” she said. “You are saying that you forgive me. Thank you. Perhaps I will eventually forgive myself. Your father was a good man. More than good. He deserved someone better than me.”

“He chose you,” he said. “He chose you because he loved you.”

“I wanted to ask you,” she said. “The reason I sought you out this morning was to ask you—”

He bent his head toward her.

“Philip—Mr. Germane,” she said, “has asked if he may call on me in London. He wants to show me the botanical gardens at Kew and the pagoda there. He wants to take me to the theater because I have not been there in years, and to Vauxhall Gardens because I have never been there. Would it … anger you, Hugo? Would it be disrespectful to your father? Would it be distasteful to you since he is your late mother’s brother?”

Hugo had watched the partiality Fiona and Philip had shown for each other all week. He had watched with a certain pleasure.

Philip had married years ago as a very young man, just before Hugo went off to war, but his wife had died in childbed less than a year later. He had remained single since then. And Fiona, despite her recent depression and ill health and selfish clinging to Constance, had suddenly bloomed into a greater maturity. She had borne a heavy burden of unhappiness and guilt, but she appeared to be making a great effort to pull her life back together.

Who knew if a match between the two of them—if it came to that—would bring them lasting happiness? It was a question that was not Hugo’s to answer. But he could wish them well.

He patted her hand.

“Make sure he takes you to Vauxhall on a night when there are fireworks,” he said. “I have heard that those are the best nights.”

She sighed deeply.

“I am very happy for you, Hugo,” she said. “When Lady Muir first came to the house to take Constance shopping for clothes, I was all prepared to hate her. But I could not quite do it even then. And this week I have seen how completely unaffected her manners are and how she does not condescend to anyone but seems genuinely to enjoy everyone’s company—even Mama’s. And I have seen how much she loves you. You looked so gorgeous together when you were waltzing last evening, despite her limp. Your announcement at breakfast was not really a surprise to anyone, you know.”

He chuckled, remembering how he had steeled himself up to it.

The first few drops of rain drove them back indoors.

He looked in at the billiards room a short while later and watched a game in progress. When he left, Ned Tucker followed him.

“Are you busy?” he asked. “May I have a word?”

Hugo took him into the library, reminding himself as he did so that he was going to have to replace somewhere to donate most of the ghastly blocks of books. Their absence would leave the shelves half empty, but he would rather that than what he faced now every time he walked into the room. He would replace them gradually with books of his own choosing and Gwendoline’s. Perhaps she would have some suggestions about what to do with the bare shelves in the meanwhile.

“It was bad of me,” Tucker said, “to accept your invitation to come here when you offered only because I was there when you invited Miss Emes’s family, and Mrs. Rowlands happened to say that I was like a son to her. You really didn’t have a choice, did you? But I ought to have said no. I said yes because I wanted to come, and I have enjoyed myself and thank you.”

“I have been more than happy to have you,” Hugo said, pouring them each a drink from the decanter on the corner of the desk and indicating two chairs over by the window.

It was still raining, he could see, though it was drizzle rather than out-and-out rain. The roads should not be too badly affected for tomorrow’s journey.

“Your sister is enjoying the spring immensely,” Tucker said, gazing down into his glass as he slowly swirled his port. “She has been mourning her father for the past year, and before that she was just a girl.”

Hugo waited.

“She has been mingling more with her cousins on her father’s side and their friends,” Tucker said. “With her own kind. And she has been mingling with the ton and going walking and riding with a number of gentlemen. I am sure they are all worthy of her, or either you or Lady Muir or both would put a stop to the association. She is too young and too—new to life to make any choices yet. Not that that stops a lot of people. But she is unusually sensible for her age, or so it seems to me. And then there is—”

He stopped to take a drink from his glass, his movements a little jerky.

“You?” Hugo suggested.

“I am who I am,” Tucker said. “I can read and write and compute. I own my own small house and shop. The shop brings in a steady income though it will never make my fortune. But people will always need hardware. I daresay I will keep the shop all my life and hand it on to my son when I die, just as my father did to me. I dabble in a few things out the back, mostly carpentry and some metalwork. I have made a few dollhouses and kennels and sold them for a nice little profit. I wouldn’t mind trying something a bit bigger. A shed, perhaps, though I do like to be able to use some imagination.”

“A summerhouse?” Hugo suggested. “A garden pavilion?”

Tucker considered.

“That would be grand,” he said, “though I don’t know anyone who needs anything like that.”

“You are looking at such a person,” Hugo said.

Tucker stared at him and then grinned.

“Really?” he said.

“Really,” Hugo said. “We’ll talk about it sometime.”

“Right,” Tucker said and returned his attention to the hardly depleted contents of his glass.

“I am not asking for her hand,” he said. “Nothing like that. I am not even asking for permission to court her. I don’t think she is ready for courtship from anyone. What I am asking …” He paused and drew a deep breath. “If the time should come when she is ready, and if she seems inclined to like me, knowing full well that she could do oceans better either with her own people or with the upper classes, would it be better if I pretended not to be interested, even perhaps if I pretended that there was someone else?”

This was a tricky one.

Or perhaps not so very tricky after all.

“Do you love her?” Hugo asked.

Tucker met his eyes.

“Something dreadful,” he said.

“Then I’ll trust you to do what is right,” Hugo said. “And I’ll trust Constance. I already do. The decision must be yours and hers. And her mother’s too if the time should come. I wouldn’t pretend anything, though, if I were you. It is best to be honest and trust her to make a wise decision.”

“Thank you,” Tucker said, and he lifted his glass and drained off the port within it. “Thank you. Now, where did you want that summerhouse to go? And how big were you thinking?”

Hugo glanced at the window. It looked as if the rain had stopped for the moment, though the clouds still hung low.

“Come,” he said. “I’ll show you. Better yet, I’ll go look for Gwendoline and have her come too to show you. Perhaps Constance will want to come with us.”

Actually, he could not wait to see Gwendoline again, to have an excuse to spend time with her. It was just that as the host of a house party, even if it was only a party of his family members, he felt obliged to spend time with everyone but his newly betrothed.

Sometimes life was a foolish business.

And sometimes it was more wonderful than he could ever have dreamed.